“And what of thee?” she asked.

“Of me?” repeated the Knight, as if at first the words conveyed to him no meaning.  “Oh, I shall go forth, seeking a worthy cause for which to fight; praying God I may soon be counted worthy to fall in battle.”

She pressed her clasped hands there where his face had rested.

“And if I find I cannot go back, Hugh?  If I decide to stay?”

He swung round and looked at her.

“Mora, is there hope?  The Bishop said there was none.”

“Hugh,” she made answer slowly, speaking with much earnestness, “shall I not be given a true vision to guide me in this perplexity?”

“Our Lady grant it,” he said.  “If you decide to stay, one word will bring me back.  If not, Mora—­this is our final parting.”

He took a step toward her.

She covered her face with her hands.

In a moment his arms would be round her.  She could not live through a third of those farewell kisses.  She had not yet faced out the second question.  But—­vision or no vision—­if he touched her now, she would yield.

“Go!” she whispered.  “Ah, for pity’s sake, go!  The heart of a nun might endure even this.  But I ask thy mercy for the heart of a woman!”

She heard the sob in his throat, as he knelt and lifted the hem of her robe to his lips.

Then his step across the floor.

Then the ring of horses’ hoofs upon the paving stones.

She was trembling from head to foot, yet she rose and went to the window overlooking the courtyard.

Mark was shutting the gates.  Beaumont held a neglected stirrup cup, and laughed as he drained it himself.  Zachary, stout and pompous, was mounting the steps.

Hugh, her husband—­Hugh, faithful beyond belief—­Hugh, her dear Knight of the Silver Shield—­had ridden off alone, to the home to which he so greatly longed to take her; alone, with his hopeless love, his hungry heart, and his untarnished honour.

Turning from the window she gathered up the habit of her Order and, clasping her cross of office, mounted to her bedchamber, there to face out in solitude the hard question of the second issue.

CHAPTER LVI

THE TRUE VISION

To her bedchamber went Mora—­she who had been Prioress of the White Ladies—­bearing in her arms the full robes of her Order, and in her hand the jewelled cross of her high office.  She went, expecting to spend hours in doubt and prayer and question before the shrine of the Virgin.  But, as she pushed open the door and entered the sunlit chamber, on the very threshold she was met by a flash of inward illumination.  Surely every question had already been answered; the second issue had been decided, while the first was yet wholly uncertain.

She had said she must have a divine vision.  Had she not this very day been granted a two-fold vision, both human and divine; the Divine, stooping in unspeakable tenderness and comprehension to the human; the Human, upborne on the mighty pinions of pure love and stainless honour in a self-sacrifice which lifted it to the Divine?